January 18, 2005

A blogstabbing mess
by Liza Sabater

Have you heard of the blogstabbing going on for several days now thanks to smear campaign lobbed off at Markos Moulitsas-Zuniga of DailyKos and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD by Zephyr Teachout, aka Zonkette? The post zonkette: Financially Interested Blogging was quoted by the Wall Street Journal, thanks mainly to her analogy of the technical consulting Kos and Jerome did for the Dean campaing as "Armstrong-Zuniga" (their consulting firm), with the Bush administration's use of tax-payers money to hire TV commentator Armstrong Williams as a talking head for the No Child Left Behind propaganda machine.

I have not had any time to really break all of this down on a post but let me say in one word what many have said a bit more nicely : B U L L S H I T.

I've been following this mess for the last week and I am absolutely disgusted by the Zonkettes of the world. I am even more appalled to know she has been oh-so-ironically ennabled by the people running the Berkman Center's Blogging, Journalism & Credibility --a conference that includes no writers from the main progressive blogs of the likes of DailyKos, MyDD or even, geez, Talking Points Memo's Joshua Micah Marshall; probably the only full-time liberal blogger everybody in the Democratic party reads.

What is even more confounding is their early announcement of a conference that is open by invitation only. Bloggers may blog about it, IRC about it, IM about it but not attend it. When you consider it more important to include the bozos of Powerline. So what if they were called the #1 blog by TIME magazine? They worked with Republican operatives to make Memogate happen and they did it horrendously well. Follow the links through this earlier post of mine, CBS + GWB AWOL = PLANTED FORGERIES?.

Anyhow, go read Nolan's Politics from Left to Right: Not-So-Spontaneous Human Combustion, but with a caveat : She incorrectly said that Kos and Jerome are supporting Rosenberg. Not true. Jerome was shocked to hear Joe Trippi was endorsing Rosenberg and not Dean because since at least late November, early December, he, Chris Bowers, Kos and others have vigorously declared their support for Howard Dean. The article, though, is worth a read for this :

The blogola scandal, as it's being called, also offers a preview, also long overdue in how what's now known as the "blogosphere" is about to fracture. It's going to split between stand alone journalists and folks who are coming to the web and creating sites with specific agendas: Promoting Howard Dean or Simon Rosenberg, for instance. There's going to be a division between folks writing online with lots of editorial experience and tested news judgment and those who are coming to this with an agenda or a set of very specific goals. Sooner or later -- it's already happening, really -- the activists will break away from the editorial folks. Sites like this one, supported at its inception by a specific cause or campaign, will certainly grow into something larger that surpasses their original intent. They'll stand alone and they're be independent. But none of this is really the huge ethical dilemma for which Big Media has rolled out and ginned up the navel gazing machine. There's lots to choose from here on the web. If you like Kos and his rants, you'll go back. If you don't care for MyDD, you'll move on. Because not all websites are the same. And, hopefully, they never will be. That's the great thing about the way journalism is being reborn on the web.

This is what Big Media – and some web writers – aren't really getting. They want to be able to dismiss out-of-hand all their on-line competitors on ethical or technical grounds as a way to keep and consolidate their power and influence. It's kind of like listening to the snooty small town banker's wife shudder about "those people down the street" who give loud parties and let their three-year-olds run around naked. It's just as petty and it's just as narrow-minded because it tries to deflect criticism not on its merits but on superficial grounds. This snobbery will soon be seen for what it is. And the on-line folks who are trying curry favor with the banker's wife -- by drawing their own lines and creating their own classification systems without a whole lot of thought or reflection -- are toeing an impossible line, one that, taken to its logical extreme, will keep them from running businesses or engaging in commerce to maintain their sites.

Not everyone uses this technology in the same way for the same purposes. Not everyone reads – or produces – a TV, newspaper or magazine story in the same way for the same impact. So it's riduculous to compare what people do with technology using the software they employ as a starting point. Big Media's attempts to police this is – cynically using "ethics" as if everyone on the web were the same, doing the same things – is an ignorant attempt to retain control. It's not going to work. But it's going to take everyone a while to come to their senses, I'm afraid. So many of those who are smart enough to know better are confused about the fights that are really taking place here.

Bloggers are self-serving : THAT'S WHY WE SELF-PUBLISH! But when you come to culturekitchen or go to any of the political writers littering the blogosphere, you go to them for a POINT OF VIEW, AN INSIGHT, A BIAS. You want hard news? Read the the frigging BBC-Online. You want opinions? Go to bloggers. We are the Safire's, Will's, Dowd's, Crouch's and Diaz' of the internets. Once in a while a blogger with "break" a story a-la Blue Lemur. But most of the time we're here to give our opinion and our analysis of what's happening around us.

The right-wing blogosphere is laughing their asses out. They had to work hard for the Swift Boats smear campaign and for Memogate (remember FreeRepublic.com's involvement in the Dan Rather fiasco?) With Zephyr, though, they got all what they needed on a silver platter.

Still, Teachout's so call ethics call was self-serving in the worst way. It got her publicity. It got her press. It got her traffic to her blog. I wonder, though, if it will get her any more access from the DNC. Will Dean take her back into the fold? And how about her legitimacy as an activist? Because as far as the progressive netroots she's has branded herself as a tool.

It is a blogstabbing mess and it all just boggles the mind.

UPDATE
Apologies to Chris Nolan for the gender mix-up. I also want to point people to her follow up post, Politics from Left to Right: More Combustion and Some Ashes.

Posted by Liza Sabater in Accountability, Activism, Blogs, Commerce, Democrats, Ethics
Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (1) | Technorati Cosmos

Trackbacks

Trackback for this post:
http://www.culturekitchen.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/2675

The following blogs make reference to this post :

» WordPress 1.5 .htaccess mod_rewrite rules from El Oso, El Moreno, and El Abogado
Just some general housekeeping. If you're short on time, don't waste it here - go check out Gustavo Rojo's excellent series, The Cycle of Abuse (parts 1, 2, 3). The blog obviously looks different. Or as Elena told me last night, "looks like ass." If... [More...]

Found inJanuary 19, 2005 04:57 PM

Say it loud, say it proud!